A computer repair shop owner left his shoeprint on a friend’s face during a drunken row in his store that ended with the victim suffering a bleed on his brain.
Stefan Gheorghe, 34, brutally beat his victim, a friend of five years, before phoning his sister in a panic while the man lay swollen and bleeding on the floor.
An ambulance was called and the man was found covered in blood and with a shoe imprint on his face.
At the hospital, it was discovered he had a bleed on the brain as well as multiple facial fractures to his nose and left eye socket.
Fiscal depute Jane Spark said the incident happened on February 6 this year, at Gheorghe’s basement shop called Bastcrystals IT Repairs on Marischal Street, Aberdeen.
Computer repair shop owner Stefan Gheorghe found ‘aggressive and panicked’
The court heard the 34-year-old’s victim, who had been drinking vodka, intended to meet Gheorghe and give him some laptops to fix.
During the meeting, the man continued to drink alcohol.
“The next thing the complainer states that he remembers is waking up at hospital with injuries to his head,” Ms Spark said.
At 5.15pm, Gheorghe phoned his sister, saying “Get me help. Get me help,” and claiming his friend had attacked him.
“The accused was found a short time later pacing around the basement in an aggressive and panicked manner, shouting in Romanian.
“The accused had a cut to his left eye, which was bleeding, and the complainer was lying on the ground on his back with a swollen left eye and bleeding from his nose with blood all over his top.
“He was mumbling incoherently. An ambulance was contacted and the complainer was carried out of the locus onto Marischal Street.
“He would be aggressive whenever the accused’s sister attempted to help and would kick out,” Ms Spark added:
Aberdeen man Stefan Gheorghe told police: ‘I just defended myself’
When police arrived, they found the complainer “heavily bleeding” from his face, with a large, swollen left eye socket and “a distinctive shoe foot imprint”.
Officers traced Gheorghe at his home and he disclosed that they had been in a “physical altercation”.
Ms Spark told the court: “He stated that the complainer had smashed a lamp within the shop and struck him across the head with a wireless keyboard after he requested the complainer leave due to his intoxication.
“It was the accused’s position that this is what caused his own injury (a cut to his left eye).”
Gheorghe had told police: “I just defended myself”.
The shoe print on the victim’s face matched a bloodstained pair of trainers belonging to Gheorghe, of Constitution Street, Aberdeen.
Marischal Street computer shop owner ‘could have killed’ victim, then worried jail could ‘prove fatal’ to his business
At Aberdeen Sheriff Court, he pled guilty to a charge of assault to severe injury.
His defence agent Gregor Kelly said his client had initially come to the north-east in 2014 to work on the city’s bypass road known as the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route, but now ran the IT repair business along with his sister.
“He doesn’t consider himself to be a violent man,” he said, adding: “The complainer can drink to excess and be troublesome but he did not deserve what befell him that day.”
Mr Kelly went on to say his client was “extremely concerned” about the prospect of a prison sentence as it would “prove fatal” for his business.
Sheriff Ian Wallace told Gheorghe: “You stamped on your victim’s head. You could have killed him and you did cause serious injury to him”.
As a direct alternative to jail, the sheriff imposed 210 hours of unpaid work and a six-month curfew.
For all the latest court cases in Aberdeen as well as crime and breaking incidents, join our Facebook group.
